S02 E11 - Getting On The Same Page
Jul 26, 2021
Do you often find yourself at odds in your parenting style with your partner? Do you wish that you both parented in the exact same way? There may be a benefit in parenting differently, let’s dig into it today. It sounds like a nice ideal… 2 parents parenting in the same way, encouraging each other, and supporting each other in their struggles. The problem is that this usually isn’t the case. This ideal is just that, an ideal. It’s not often that 2 partners have the exact same thoughts and ideas about parenting, or anything else for that matter. Maybe this isn’t a problem? Let’s discuss this idea, and feel free to reach out with your thoughts!
In this episode:
- How fighting over parenting will create an unhealthy environment
- What interpersonal synchronization is and how it can help
- Why it might be amazing that you DON’T parent the same way
- How we may be more unified than we think we are
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Episode Transcript
Crystal The Parenting Coach: Hey, I'm Crystal, a certified life coach and mom of four. In this podcast, we combine radical connection and positive parenting theories with the How-To Life Coaching Tools and Mindset Work to completely transform our relationship with our children.
Join me on my journey, unleash your inner parenting expert, and become the mother you've always wanted to be. Make sure you subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast and rate this podcast on Apple, and check out my transformative monthly membership for moms in the show notes.
Episode 11, Getting On The Same Page.
How fighting over parenting will create an unhealthy environment
All right, so you probably know a lot about Connection Parenting now that you've been listening to me for quite some time; you probably understand a little bit of the gist of it, and how it works, and how we can do it, and tools to help us do it.
And you might be kind of thinking, 'Okay, this is a great way to do it – incorporating it, and noticing changes, and feeling like it works.' And then, you might feel like you hit a wall because you get to a point where you feel like, 'I'm doing it this way, but my partner is not,' 'I'm doing it this way, but my partner doesn't want to change his style of parenting.'
Maybe your partner thinks, 'I turned out fine - my parents parented this way, and I'm totally fine with parenting this same way. I don't want to change my parenting style. There is nothing wrong with my parenting style.'
You know, 'If it's not broken, then don't fix it,' and they don't think it's broken. They could have lots of different ideas or stories about what's going on here. But this is so common.
It's so common for people to say, "How do I get my husband on the same page?" And, what they really mean is, "My husband's wrong, and I'm right." "Now that I think that I'm right, now that I agree with this new way of parenting, I think my husband's doing it wrong."
Now, I'm going to tell you a little bit about how this can play out in a real situation. This has happened in a conversation that I had with my client before. So, this client really felt like their style of parenting, that they were changing it; they felt like it was going really well.
You know, they were still struggling with it, for sure. It wasn't perfect, but they were like, 'This is never going to work because of my partner. This is never going to work because my partner's never going to change.'
And so, in this situation, I was talking to my mom, so she was talking about her husband. And so, she was really on board with this and felt like her husband wasn't on board, that she would talk to him about it and he would be like, 'Nope, not going to change. Nope, I'm not doing that.' Maybe didn't agree with it, you know, whatever.
So, in this situation, what was happening prior to our call was that she would then be super frustrated with him. She was frustrated that he wasn't parenting the same way that she was, that they weren't on the same page, that she felt like her husband was maybe even ruining their kids because of the parenting modalities that he was using.
And so, because of that, there was all of this strain in their relationship. And that strain in their relationship meant that both of them were probably more frustrated, more stressed; and definitely, their parenting was being affected because of that pressure and that stress that was happening within their relationship.
Now, I want you to imagine the same situation, but instead, what if the story was something like, you know, we parent differently and that's okay. That just like immediately drops the stress in the relief.
And you might be thinking like, 'No, no, no, no, no, but they have to parent the same way that I do.' But I just want you to imagine for a minute, let's imagine that there's no right or wrong about parenting.
It doesn't matter, right? There's just all different styles of parenting and everything goes. If you believed that – if you believe that it didn't matter, that it was totally fine, that your kids were going to turn out no matter what, that it was totally fine whatever way your husband wanted to parent, whatever way your partner wanted to parent, and you could partner or you could parent any way you wanted to as well - I feel like immediately, that would just release the stress.
That would release the pressure. It would almost be relieving, right? It would feel like a relief. Like, 'Ugh, I can finally breathe the sigh of relief and be okay with my parenting style, and be okay with his parenting style.'
Now, if that were the situation, if that was what was happening in your mind, what happens would be you wouldn't be as, you know, stressed in your conversations with your partner. You wouldn't be as strained.
There wouldn't be as much arguing happening there. You likely are parenting from a better emotion when you're parenting your own children, right? Because even if you're stressed and you're overwhelmed, your frustration is geared towards somebody else.
If you feel like it's coming from your partner, it's still going to be played out in every other area of your life, right? It's the fuel that's driving the actions that you're taking throughout the day. So, it's going to impact everything.
So, if instead, it's like, this relief and this contentment and this calm, how different that parenting is going to be. So, that's the difference there. And what I see often – and I'm not just blaming this on everybody else, this has totally happened to me in my own life as well – is this kind of deep-seated thought of like, 'I'm right, and you're wrong.'
And like, or at least, 'I'm more right, and you're a little bit more wrong. Like my parenting style is at least a little bit more right than yours, so you should definitely convert to my parenting style.'
And it's interesting because anytime I'll learn something new, I'm like, 'Oh yeah, you're right, I was totally wrong about that.' And, I'm easy to accept it. Like as soon as I understand something in a different light and I change my opinion, I don't feel bad about that.
I don't stick with my opinions just because they've been my opinions forever. I'm really good at like learning and growing; and I'm like, 'Yeah, okay, you know what? This is a totally better way at looking at it than I thought. I agree.'
But then I notice that I don't necessarily have grace or compassion for other people who haven't made that understanding leap yet. And I'm like, 'But wait a second, they're wrong now.' Right?
It's not like-- I'm not consciously or aware of these thoughts all of the time, definitely not. But they are just kind of these subconscious things happening in the back of my mind.
And the only reason I've been able to dig them out is through thought work to kind of notice like, 'Okay, wait, why do I feel so awkward about this? Why do I feel this way, so strained when I'm speaking about this?'
And it always boils down to this kind of like, 'I'm at least a little bit more right, and you're just a little bit more wrong here.' And whenever we have that, that's going to play out in how we feel and how we interact in that relationship.
So, which do you imagine would be a healthier home life, in general? If we're doing this for the good of our kids, if we're changing our parenting style for the good of our kids, which of those scenarios in which I talked about, which are very true and real scenarios that happen often in our lives – or could – and in clients that I see regularly, which one of you--
Which one of those, do you think is a healthier environment for your children to be raised in? Which do you think is going to be more emotionally stable and secure for them? So, I just want you to think about that for a minute. Like, maybe it's not such a big deal to not be on the same page.
Maybe this whole being on the same page as our partner is kind of one of those harmful, kind of, insidious thoughts that might actually be not that helpful, that sounds kind of pretty on the outside – like, 'Well, that sounds like a lovely idea – but can maybe be a little bit hard for us, and maybe put some more stress and pressure in our relationship.
And maybe another story that could also be true about this could be, and that's okay; we're not on the same page and that's okay, and maybe we're not on the same page and that could be perfect.
Now, you might be thinking, there's no way this could be perfect, but I want to go back to that same client I was talking about. And so, I asked her that same question, 'Why is this perfect?'
After a lot of nervous giggling and like, 'Nope, this can't be perfect,' and kind of sitting and stewing on it, she was like, 'Well, I think they probably learn different things from him than they learned from me. I think that maybe they interact with him in a different way than they do with me. I think that there's some growth happening there. I think they still do really love their dad, and they still have a good relationship with their dad.' Right?
So, when we can kind of flip that story in that narrative, and think about the positives, there already was some positives going on there, but even though we weren't both doing exactly the same parenting style that we still, there were still some positive healthy relationship stuff happening there as well.
What interpersonal synchronization is and how it can help
So, there's a term that I came across when I was at a Positive Parenting workshop, one time. It was called interpersonal synchronization. And what it means is as I change, the people around me are influenced and start to change a little bit as well; and it can even go beyond that, so the people around them can start to change.
So, the example that was used in the conference that I was at was, you know, if one person decides they're going to start eating really healthy and maybe go to the gym every day – and they're like talking about it often and they're making this big lifestyle change – people around them, will also start to eat a little bit more healthy.
Maybe they'll start to work out a little bit more or think about working out a little bit more; and even people around them will too.
And it wasn't because that one person said, "You all should do this. You should all do this the right way. I'm a little bit more right; you're a little bit more wrong in the way that you're living, and you should eat a little bit healthier. You should come to the gym with me. You should work out."
You know, all of those things didn't happen in that way; they just happened through that inspiration. So, when I think of interpersonal synchronization, I think of it's like a domino effect of inspiration.
I'm changing and other people around me are seeing how it's affecting me; and it's inspiring the people around me, which is then inspiring the people around them, and then they'll inspire more people, right? It's this huge domino effect.
So, maybe interpersonal synchronization in parenting can look something like, 'I'm just going to stay in my own lane with this parenting thing. I'm going to make these changes from the inside-out. I'm going to help shift this relationship I have with my child, and it's going to be about me. It's not going to be about my husband changing or my kids changing. It's just going to be about me.'
And when that shift happens, maybe over time, that inspiration domino effect, that interpersonal synchronization will take effect; and the people around us – including, and maybe our partners – will change as well.
We're not doing it so they can change. We're not telling them that we're right and there wrong, and that our way is better. We're just changing for us, and that's it. So, part of this interpersonal synchronization and being able to focus on this – and not focus on changing others – is dropping our expectations.
Why it might be amazing that you DON’T parent the same way
So just like we have an expectation about our kids, the same thing I always say, 'The expectations are not about them and their behavior, they're about us and our behavior.'
So, if I drop the expectation that my husband has to parent in the same way, that we have to be on the same page, that he shouldn't yell at our kids, that he shouldn't use rewards and punishments, that he should connect with each child every day, that he should connect before he directs or connects before he corrects.
All of these things that we're learning throughout time, we're like, 'Well, now, I have this expectation that he should do this as well,' then we're going to be frustrated when that doesn't happen.
So, it's not about them and their behavior; it's about us and how we show up. We're going to have a lot more of an influence on our children and on our partners if we're not focusing so much on manipulating or changing their behavior, and we're focusing more inward instead.
So, just dropping those expectations because expectations always lead to frustration. Those unmet expectations will lead to frustration. So, just dropping them for us, not for anybody else, dropping that we even have to be on the same page or that that's the better way to do it.
And then, changing from the inside-out. And maybe instead, we can view this issue – instead of it being an issue or a big deal, we just drop that and we're like, 'No, it's totally fine.'
The Rough Draft Vs Revision Example
I was recently at another parenting conference; and the way that she describes our stories, that I talk about 'our stories and our thoughts', she says, "It's like a rough draft and a revision." So, the rough draft here could be something like, 'This is a big deal, this is a problem, this has to change, we have to be on the same page.'
And that might be actually creating more problems. We might be making it more of a big deal. We might be making that division between us and our partner. So, there might be more problems being made there because of that story. So, instead of that rough draft version; we notice what that rough draft is, we write it down, then we're going to write a revision statement.
So, a revision story to this could be something like, 'This is great that we're not on the same page. Our children can learn from the two different styles that we have in parenting. My child doesn't need to have, you know, two parents that parent exactly the same way all the time; maybe it's even better that they don't.'
So, what could also be true here? What could be a revision statement for you and your partner, and you being on the same page? Just think about that.
The 'ladder of thoughts' Example
And another idea here that might be helpful is the idea of ladder thoughts. So maybe at the top, you want to believe that it's like totally perfect that you're not both on the same page, but your mind is like listening to this podcast and you're like, 'No, that's crazy. I can never get there.'
So, a ladder of thoughts is like building us to get to that thought. So, right at the very bottom, we might be at a thought that's like, we're not on the same page; that might be our current thought. So, maybe another ladder could be something like, 'It is the way that it is' or 'People have different opinions on things,' 'My husband and I differ in our opinions.'
Maybe beyond that it could go to like, 'It's actually great the way that it is,' 'It's great that we have different opinions,' 'I can see why it's beneficial that we have different viewpoints on things,' 'I can see why parenting in two different ways can be beneficial.'
So, just building the next level, like a rung on a ladder, you're just building to the next rung of belief. And so, you're going to work on whatever rung of belief you're at; working on from where you're at, to the next rung of belief until you get to that top part, whatever that is for you.
It's perfect that we parent totally differently. It's great; whatever you want that to be, for you. And the truth is, from all the reading that I have done, it's amazing for children to have loads of healthy attachments like neighbors and friends and grandparents, and you know, school teachers, and all of these people in their life.
But it's also true that kids only need that one healthy attachment to have that secure attachment and that to be successful. It's not-- They don't need to have everybody around them and doing that parenting style with them.
So, it doesn't mean that, and it also doesn't mean that they won't have a healthy attachment to your partner either just because he doesn't do all of these things or she doesn't do all of these things that we want her to do or want him to do. They still could have a secure and healthy parenting style.
So, we're not going to judge them or their parenting style, or say that they're doing it wrong or feel like they're doing it wrong. We're just going to work on ourselves.
And another thing is that over time, we learn from each other. We can be open to different ways of doing things; and as we notice how different other people are doing it than we're doing it, we might actually learn ways that work for us too.
Finding your parenting hybrid
Over time, you'll find what I think is your parenting hybrid, your own parenting hybrid is like your parenting style. It doesn't have to be the one style you read about in one book. It doesn't have to be the one style that you hear on a podcast, or the one style that a parent coach or therapist tells you about.
It can be your own unique hybrid. And I think that's what truly being a parenting expert is; is finding our own hybrids, and learning and seeing what works for us.
Another thing that I learned at another parenting conference – because I love going to them – is a communication pattern, where you sit there and you have a conversation with somebody, but you don't try to come up with a solution.
So, I would just talk about my concerns and talk about my thoughts; and then, my husband would talk about his concerns and his thoughts. And, at no point, are we trying to come up with a solution in that conversation; we're just talking about our concerns.
And I actually had this conversation with a child of mine about another topic; and it worked really well. It helped me, over time, create more ideas and more solutions, and feel more connected to my child.
And so, this can be a great method of communication with your partner as well. Like we are not trying to come up a solution right now, we're just going to listen to each other; listen to each other's sides and concerns.
When I relaxed about this whole parenting style and having to be on the same page, then what happened for me, personally, was that I wasn't so pushy. I wasn't so fighty about it. I wasn't so judgey about it. I would just share tiny little snippets of things I was learning.
I would be like, 'Oh, I just read the best part. Can I read it to you?' Or I'd be listening to like a podcast episode or a Positive Parenting conference, while we were driving together, in the background.
I would communicate with him about things that I loved and like, 'Oh, I really have to tell you this thing that's great,' or 'I noticed that my child did this the other day and I wanted to share it with you.' And you know, just, it came in such a fluid and natural way; and it was never a push, and it was never a fight.
It was all from dropping that, 'I'm on the right side of this', that really changed my interactions with him. And over time, I feel like we have found such a good hybrid. What I've also found is that my parents who really understand connection parenting and are learning it and taking it in, make their own hybrids as well.
And the way that the husbands deal with it differently than the wives, is awesome and wonderful and unique. It's so different. It's not exactly this cookie-cutter style or way; and it doesn't need to be this cookie-cutter style or way either.
How we may be more unified than we think we are
So, I just want to leave you with the thought that you might be more unified on this than you actually think; that even though you feel like you're not on the same page and you're really divided, you might be more unified.
What I've noticed in my clients, the similarities that they have are that they both love their kids deeply. They both want to have a great relationship with their kids forever. When their kids are adults, they want to have great relationships with them. They both want to care for and teach their kids. They might go about it in different ways as we all do, but that's what makes life beautiful.
So, maybe there is more than you agree on than you think. Maybe there is more that unifies you than that divides you. Maybe there's no, 'I'm right and he's wrong'.
Maybe working on that story that we have – that they're damaging our kids or they're not going to have a great relationship with our kids – isn't true and isn't the only way to view that story.
And maybe we can look for those unifying stories like; we both love and care for our kids, we both want what's best, we want them to learn, we want them to have great relationships. Doesn't that just feel better?
So, when we drop that weight of, 'We have to be on the same page, we have to parent the same,' and be open to the idea that maybe we are already more unified than we currently think – and that parenting the same way as each other isn't necessary for a happy and healthy home or to raise a happy and healthy child – that just feels so much better.
I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Make sure that you give it Five Stars on Apple, and check out my monthly membership for moms in the show notes.